Oh, I love Gambit! I thought I saw the name "Remy" when Mystique first saw the list of names of mutants on the computer of LadyStrike. I hope he makes a showing for X3.

nofx, I didn't know that Dr. McCoy could change his appearance to look like a human. That's interesting.

I also recognized Shadowcat and Colossus, but I didn't know about Banshee until a co-worker of mine, who read the comic books, told me about her. Never heard of the kid who couldn't sleep or the young mutants as you call them.

The original Beast was a really bad looking. The original X-men were canceled for a few issues they ran back stories then brought the new cast in. The original x-men were pretty bad they didnt have that spark.

I dont think they will bring Gambit in the next movie. Maybe later, one reason is you already have the rebal Wolverine but I think in the next movie we will see wolv grow as a team player. I think they will bring new characters in to balence out the team. I can see him in the 4th to add that new spark to shake up the team. Plus they can start his romance with Rouge. Since they dont seem to follow age to well with the movie he could appear in the next as a teenager in a small part.

I'm sure some of the characters like Rogue, Iceman, & Pyro were cast as teens so they could draw in the teen audiences. They already had the adult audiences with Wolverine, Storm, Jean Greay, and Cyclops. The age mix ups worked out really well in the movie, I think.

I thought Iceman and Rogue have been made part of the team already since they were wearing XMen uniforms when they visited the president.

I just saw X2 last night ! what a great sequel! I have never followed Xmen before the first movie and someone mentioned a "Gambit" earlier in this forum ... can someone please give me a little background on that mutant? Thanks to anyone who does!

Remy Lebeau (Gambit) is a member of the X-Men. But before he took up a life of fighting for the good of both man and mutant, he lived in New Orleans as a thief. He started out as an orphan in New Orleans. A leader of a group of thieves found young Remy and adopted him as his son. As he grew up, Gambit became an exceptional thief, especially with the help from his mutant power, which gave him the ability to charge inanimate objects, by touch, and make them into powerful explosives. The group of thieves that [had adopted] Gambit was constantly at war with a group of assassins. Because of this, Gambit became a very skilled fighter. But, to make a truce between the two groups, Gambit married one of the assassins named Bella Donna. After they were married, though, Gambit's brother in law [(who didn't approve of the marriage)] challenged him to a duel. So, Gambit accepted, and won the battle [by] seriously wounding his opponent. Gambit fled so that he would not cause a war between the thieves and the assassins [and] was forced to use his criminal abilities to survive. He also employed himself as a card player. Since Gambit had become very handy with a deck of cards, he would "charged" them and use them as his main weapon.

Eventually, Gambit encountered the X-Man known as Storm. At the time, Storm had been transformed into a child with amnesia. Gambit saved her life from her enemy, the evil Shadow King. After Storm regained her memory and her real age, she tried to initiate Gambit into the X-Men. Gambit was accepted into the X-Men and decided to stay since he fell in love with [fellow] X-Man, Rogue. With Gambit's mutant power and his experience in combat he became a very valuable addition to the X-Men's team.

I think the writers did a fantastic job with Magneto and Mystique. They were instrumental in saving everyone, yet they were still the bad guys. I feel bad for both of them, as they really do want the same thing Prof X wants, they just don't think it can be achieved, so they go for destruction of the human race instead. Mystique was right on when she told Night Crawler that the reason she didn't always look like a "regular" human is because she shouldn't have too. I think these movies work on may different levels.

Now for my questions:

Is there a character named Phoenix in the X-Men? Is it Jean Grey?

Why didnít Ice-guy Freeze the dam water? (, yes it was dam water not damn water)

Why didnít Wolverine let that metal/armor guy help him? He was cool.

Why was ice-guys brother so pissed off at him? Is there history there?

Phoenix was indeed a character in the comic book X-Men series... and yes Phoenix and Jean Grey were the same person... sort of.

It is actually one of the most complex and popular comic book storylines of all time.

The gist of it is that Jean Grey sacrifices herself to save all of the other X-Men as they re-enter the Earth's atmosphere from outerspace. She 'dies' but her body is taken over by an ultra powerful entity known as the Phoenix Force and she becomes known as the Phoenix. All of Jean Grey's original memories and consciousness are copied.

At this point she is actually VERY powerful, as in one of the more powerful forces in the universe. Anyway fast forward and Phoenix is faced with the dilemma to choose between saving humanity or destroying it, blah blah blah... and in the end, the shred of humanity that she has in her consciousness causes Phoenix to kill herself so that humankind can live... or something like that (I am remembering comic book storylines from my childhood, so bear with me here.)

Anyway, the comic book writers decided to mess with the history they created and make it so that Jean Grey was not actually ever dead and the Phoenix copied her body blah blah blah, but every true comic book fan knew that it happened the way I told it above.

The metal guy was Colossus who is one of the original X-Men in the comic book, as was Iceman.

The characters could have used their powers in lots of ways to make things easier for themselves but I guess the show had to go on with some adversity.

We could probably start a whole thread about differences between the comic and the movie... ie:

Thanks, Mosaik for that info. I edited your post above to include the word **spoilers** for those who don't want to know what happens or might happen next.

***Spoilers****

I pretty much know all the info you posted, but I didn't know Gambit saved Storm or that Storm had lost her memory. Very interesting. I never read the comics, but I watched almost all the cartoons in the 80's.

Cali, like Mosaik pointed out, there are differences between the comic/cartoons and the movie, but here are my thoughts on the movie version.

Mosaik already addressed the Phoenix question.

Why didnít Ice-guy Freeze the dam water? (, yes it was dam water not damn water)

I thought about that too, but then I came to the conclusion that Bobby (Iceman) is still a kid and doesn't know how to control his power very well yet.

Why didnít Wolverine let that metal/armor guy help him? He was cool.

Colossus is awesome and would've been very effective in helping Wolverine, but Wolverine needed someone to take care of the mutant children. Those kids were scared and probably didn't know how to use their powers very well yet.

Why was ice-guys brother so pissed off at him? Is there history there?

I just thought the brother thought mutants were freaks, like manyother did, including his parents. He was probably afraid, so he turned his brother in. I rarely saw Iceman in any of the cartoons I saw, so I don't know about his past or if there is any history between him and his brother.

These are just my opinions based on the movie version.

Nightcrawler became one of my favorites in this movie. Of course, Wolverine is still number one with me.

Why was ice-guys brother so pissed off at him? Is there history there?

I think it was to illustrate just how deep the fear and hatred of mutants ran... the notion that Iceman's own brother would betray him because he was conditioned by the media/gov't/society to believe that mutants were evil freaks is a powerful plot device that illustrates just how tough it was for these mutants to exist in the "human" world.